Profs. reflect on Chinua Achebe's significance
African and American studies and comparative literature professor Ayo Colyteaches Things Fall Apart four times each year, and over three-quarters of her students have usually already read the novel.
“I’m always amazed at its trajectory in American curriculum,” Coly said.
The universality of Achebe’s work stems from its ability to initiate discussions of current issues – in her case, “globalization and masculinity,” Coly said.
In addition to analyzing the novel’s literary qualities, Coly focuses on uncovering themes of masculinity.
Dartmouth students who have previously read the book “revisit it from a standpoint of intellectual maturity,” Coly said. “This forces a difference reading.”
Similarly, anthropology professor James Igoeteaches Things Fall Apart through a cultural and anthropological lens. The book, which inspired him in his career, allows him to further analyze the clash of cultures inherent in colonialism.
“It gives you a sense of the way in which it disrupted people’s cultures and worldviews,” Igoe said. “In class, I’ve juxtaposed it to classical anthropology about colonial era encounters.”
Achebe's work was one of the first to discuss colonization from an African perspective, Igoe said. Igoe’s favorite element is the way in which Achebe recognizes the shortcomings of a culture while still taking its values seriously.
“Things Fall Apart provides a kind of nuance,” Igoe said. “It doesn’t romanticize either the culture or the main characters. It shows them as having flaws.”
Both Coly and Igoe find the book to be extremely popular with students, since readers become deeply engaged in the challenging questions they are forced to consider.
“It is a book that people come back to again and again,” Igoe said. “The reason that professors use it is because students like it so much.”
Things Fall Apart demonstrates Achebe’s “ability to convey common humanity,” he added. “He makes all audiences invested in the struggles of Nigeria.”
Achebe received his first of several honorary degrees from the College in 1972 and visited as a Montgomery Fellow in 1990.Since September 2009, Achebe has taught at Brown University as an Africana studies professor. His son, Chidi, graduated from the Geisel School of Medicine, then known as Dartmouth Medical School, in 1996 and currently mentors medical students in Geisel’s Urban Health Scholars program.